"By heavens, Virginia, there shall be no contingency of my making! I have crossed the Rubicon, and you shall have the knowledge as you have had possession of my whole soul from the days of our infancy. 'Tis yours, Virginia, wholly yours; soul, mind and heart, all yours. Mould them as you will, reject me if you must, they are still yours. I swear never to profane the shrine of this first and only love by offering them up on any other. They are offered now, because my destiny so wills it. We are the creatures of circumstances. I have vainly struggled against the overwhelming tide which has borne me to this point. I am goaded onward by insult--beset with menaces, and torn by the storms of such a passion as never man before encountered. Can you, dear Virginia, vouchsafe to me some measure of relief from these distracting emotions? Say that you would have been mine under other circumstances! Say that you will never wed that proud and imperious Beverly! Say any thing, Virginia, which shall calm the tumults of my bosom, and feed my hopes for the future." While he thus spoke, the blushing maiden was evidently labouring under emotions little less powerful than his own. Her previous air of offended feminine dignity was fast melting into sympathy, with the impassioned feelings of the excited youth. She felt for his peculiar griefs and cares, and shared his warmer sentiments. The youth perceived the softening mood, and continued. "Speak, I pray you, Virginia, I am in your hands. Speak me into existence, or banish me from your presence!" "I do not know, Nathaniel," said Virginia, after many attempts to give utterance to her thoughts, "whether it is proper at all times to speak the truth, but I will not deceive you now. There does indeed seem to be a peculiar concurrence of circumstances around us, and more perhaps than you are yourself aware of. I did not intend to deceive you, or lead you astray; when I told you a few moments since that I knew nothing of any other struggle than that arising from your own excited feelings, I spoke the truth, but perhaps not the entire truth;" and as she spoke, a lovely blush suffused her neck and downcast face; "I knew of other struggles indeed, but not your's, Nathaniel." "Were they yours, Virginia, and of the same nature? say they were, and heaven bless for ever the tongue that utters it." "That you have to ask, does more honour to my discretion, than I have ascribed to it myself of late. I have had painful fears that I should have little to tell on an occasion like the present, should it ever come, with my father's approbation. And if I have now overstepped the bounds of that proviso, it was in the hope of calming your troubled spirits, and preventing a catastrophe upon which I have looked with dreadful anticipation, since the night of the insurrection." "And will you indeed be mine?" "I will, Nathaniel, whenever you gain my father's approbation; but without it, never."